Ming Xia
Theasophie
Huber Quizno
CHAPTER 1
“Have you no’ had a niggle of a tap then?”
Duff looked up at his friend. He’d been staring into a pool of dark ale like he was a soothsayer and it was a diviner’s tool. They sat in a corner of a pub like a sad pair of leftover bachelors.
“Ah, Brean, no’ you, too.”
“Me, too? ’Tis only I here, Duffy. How many are you seein’, man? And ‘tis only your third pint.”
“Was referrin’ to me mum. Earlier this very e’en, was mindin’ my own affairs when the grand dame comes sashayin’ ‘round and orders my own secretary away so that she can discreetly inquire as to my ability to mate.”
Brean waited for two entire breaths before he began to beat the table and laugh hard enough to squeeze moisture from his eyes.
From a certain point of view, Duff supposed he could admit it might be comical.
Duff’s mum had wandered into his suite that afternoon and nodded at Grieve in that way that said, “Did you no’ just remember somethin’ needs doin’ down the hall there?”
As the door was open to his assistant’s office, he was able to observe the entire exchange. Grieve, who had not survived fifteen years in palace employ without skills, knew how to take a subtle hint. He rose, gave a slight bow, and asked for leave by excuse of errand for the prince. She graciously gave him leave.
Once the secretary had vacated the rooms, the queen began to slowly walk about Grieve’s office looking at this, studying that, as if she was visiting a museum and expecting to be tested later on what she saw. She was exactly twenty-five years older than her son and still lovely enough to drive sales of magazines when she appeared on the cover.
He had gotten his big-boned frame and height from his father, but his dark hair and violet eyes were the unmistakable stamp of maternal genes.
“Social call, Mum?”
“What else, love?”
“Well, that’s nice.” Duff looked up. “Tea?”
“Thank you, no. Had my fill already.”
There was nothing to do but wait until she said what she had to say. “Would you care to sit then?”
“Um? Aye, perhaps.” She strutted herself to the smart red leather armchair in front of Duff’s desk and sat down as gracefully as a woman half her age. “I was thinkin’…” Duff groaned. “What was that?”
“Did no’ say a thin’, Mum.”
Lorna Torquil was Queen of Scotia fae, but for the moment, she was simply a woman looking at the male child she had raised to adulthood, who was also her own heart walking outside her body. He was her only son, but he was also her only child, which probably intensified her feelings. All that maternal impulse was trained on one fae who normally saw that as a blessing.
“I was thinkin’,” she began again, “that ‘tis past time for the matin’ to come callin’?”
The way she cocked her head he felt like he’d been placed on a glass rectangle and slid underneath a giant microscope for closer scrutiny.
“The matin’?”
“Aye. I look at the social pages, you know. I see how many of your friends have had you standin’ up for them at their handfastin’s. Droppin’ all ‘round you, are they no’?”
Her gaze was boring down. She was doing that mother thing. The one where she examined him closely, looking for some sign that he might be clipping the truth. It was some mystical means of lie detection that was practically foolproof.
He knew the color was spreading up his neck and he knew she could see it. So he decided the best cover was to laugh.
“Mum. You’re embarrassin’ me. Aye. I’m practically the last one standin’. Thanks very much for stoppin’ by to point that out. Now I really ought to get ‘round a couple details before…”